Staged Appropriately
🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑 An important and difficult show about MS which sadly lacks the energy needed to really bring the subject to life
picture credit: Graeme Braidwood,
To start with; let’s say that Bright Places is a brave, worthy, important, and above all; difficult play about Multiple Sclerosis. Both difficult for the Cast & creatives and difficult for the audience. It’s a worthy production with a worthy cause, and it has an awful lot going for it. I am all for comedies about difficult circumstances - I truly think it’s where some of the best comedies lie. But when one is making such a production the vital ingredient is energy and I’m afraid Bright Places just doesn’t manage to pull that off.
Bright Places is written by Rae Mainwaring and describes itself as a “three-woman one-woman show”. It tells the story about Rae herself and between 1 and 3 of her personas - played by Lauren Foster, Aimee Berwick and Rebecca Holmes. It runs almost like a revue, with various scenes inspired from Rae’s life, some tragic, some funny and some heart-warming. It’s clearly very thought out and deeply personal; An instance that comes to mind is Rae’s reflection on her parents' experience of her diagnosis.
We’re treated to a proper flashback experience of the 90’s and 00’s, when Rae was diagnosed. Without wishing to spoil too much the jarring change between partying at uni and the diagnosis is a particularly powerful experience. The variety of scenes is fun and interesting but I think perhaps there’s a chance to push even harder. At times it feels like the show might be pulling its punches - No! Go for it!
And there are funny bits! As someone who studied Neurology I particularly enjoyed references to Myelin Sheaths (sorry, MYLEEEEEN SHEEATH); wearing ‘Nodes of Ranvier’. It might go over a lot of heads but the medics and the MS patients will certainly get a chuckle out of it!
The ending sequence is particularly poignant and powerful with an important message about disability, especially with regards to how one identifies. This is clearly something Rae has struggled with in her life, as earlier referenced in the bus scene.
The actresses, each of them, are fantastic in their own regard, and yet I’m left with a slight feeling they’ve not met before? It’s difficult to keep the energy up in a show with such a hard topic and even one beat dropped is enough to kick us out of the show’s thrall.
Overall you’d be hard-pressed to find a more interesting and raw show about this difficult subject and it’s certainly worth a watch but I feel like it’s lacking an energy and vibrancy that such a show badly needs!
